previous next
47. But upon the death of Antigonus1 the Aetolians, despising the Achaeans on account of their slothful ways (for now that they were accustomed to save themselves by other men's prowess and had taken shelter behind the Macedonian arms, they were living in great inactivity and lack of discipline), proceeded to interfere in the affairs of Peloponnesus;2 and after plundering the territories of Patrae and Dyme on their way, they invaded Messenia and ravaged it. [2] At this Aratus was incensed, and seeing that Timoxenus, who at that time was general of the Achaeans, was hesitant and dilatory, since his term of office was just about to expire, he himself, having been chosen to succeed Timoxenus, anticipated his term of office by five days for the sake of giving aid to the Messenians. And having assembled the Achaeans, who were physically and mentally unfit for war, he met with defeat at Caphyae. [3] Then, being thought to have conducted the campaign with too much ardour, his purposes were once more blunted and he gave up the cause and his hopes for lost, so that oftentimes, when the Aetolians gave him an advantage, he neglected it, and suffered them to revel, as it were, in Peloponnesus, with great boldness and wantonness. [4] Once more, therefore, the Achaeans stretched out their hands imploringly to Macedonia, and brought Philip down to take part in Hellenic affairs, above all things because his goodwill towards Aratus and his confidence in him led them to hope that they would find him easy-tempered in all things and manageable.

1 In 221 B.C. See the Cleomenes, xxx.

2 In 22o B.C. See the Cleomenes, xxxiv. 1.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

load focus Greek (Bernadotte Perrin, 1926)
hide References (5 total)
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: